Highly Sensitive» Highly Sensitive – HSP, highly sensitive people, high sensitivity trait2009-06-29T01:19:58ZWordPresshttp://highlysensitive.org/feed/atom/Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Erika Harris on moving beyond “coping” or “surviving”]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=1292009-06-27T02:09:09Z2009-06-27T01:59:18ZIn her ebook “You’ve Got Nerve!” An Empowerment Toolkit for Highly Sensitive People, Erika Harris helps readers celebrate and nurture themselves.
She writes, “Yes of course, we must first master HSP basics like self-care, energy-management, boundaries and joyful work.
“And while I will certainly help you with those things in each celebration, those concerns are starting-points because we are destined for quite a bit more than merely ‘coping’ or ’surviving.’
“On personal and planetary levels, we are equipped to create and experience Heaven on Earth.
“As my favorite poet, Rumi, asked,
‘Why crawl when you can fly?’
“Yes, you may very well feel every single bump, nuance, wave and vibration (and I know they don’t all feel good), but that hasn’t stopped you. And that power to show up for life while feeling and processing 1000% more than most people is exactly what fuels your ability and calling to Lead in Light.”
high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity resources
]]>1Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[The shy personality and two kinds of social phobia]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=1252009-06-21T00:46:48Z2009-06-21T00:46:48Z“There are two different types of social phobia. The first is generalized, where anything and everything in the way of social interaction has the potential to send your nerves into overdrive.
“People who are only afraid of a few or a particular type of social interaction have non-generalized or specific social phobia.
“To help determine if you are suffering from social phobia answer the following three questions:
1. Is being embarrassed or looking stupid one of your worst fears?
2. Does fear of embarrassment cause you to avoid interacting with people or doing things?
3. Do you avoid activities where you are the focus or center of attention?”
shy personality, anxiety and performance, shyness, introverted personality, high sensitivity personality
]]>1Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Video: The Highly Sensitive Person by Therese J. Borchard]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=1232009-06-17T03:14:20Z2009-06-17T03:14:20Z
“Do you get overwhelmed easily? You could be one of the lucky highly sensitive persons living in an overwhelming world.”
Therese J. Borchard is the author of the hit daily blog “Beyond Blue” on Beliefnet.com, which is featured regularly on The Huffington Post and was voted by PsychCentral.com as one of the top 10 depression blogs, and she moderates the popular depression support group, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet’s social networking site. From bio on her site www.ThereseBorchard.com
high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity resources
]]>0Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Cheryl Richardson on protecting our high sensitivity]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=812009-05-29T01:25:23Z2009-05-29T01:25:23ZAuthor and coach Cheryl Richardson points out, “We all have varying levels of sensitivity.
“It’s the fundamental part of us that allows us to be touched by beauty, signs of grace, or intimate moments with others.”
She adds that it is also “the mechanism that provides us with an internal warning signal that lets us know when we’re in situations that may be hazardous to our emotional, physical, or spiritual health.
“As we grow in our understanding and practice of extreme self care, our sensitivity level rises and we pay closer attention to what we need to feel good.
high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity resources
]]>0Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Counselor Rue Hass on using EFT to help highly sensitive people celebrate their positive qualities]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=772009-04-28T02:53:53Z2009-04-28T02:38:27ZRue Hass, M.A. is a counselor and Intuitive Mentor – and a Highly Sensitive Person. An EFT Master therapist, she uses Emotional Freedom Techniques with a variety of clients, including HSP individuals to “help them see what they and others might view as a ‘flaw’ as a ‘blessing’ or gift.”
The blog post EFT World Summit Day#6- Rue Anne Hass “EFT for the Highly Sensitive Person” continues, “Rue mentions somewhere in the course of the interview [see video below] that she considers herself to be ‘highly sensitive’ and further, that she also believes that it is the nature of many people in the helping field.
“Rue Hass finds EFT to be a great match for highly sensitive people, giving them the opportunity to reframe their flaws in a compassionate and positive light, and to begin to honour themselves for continuing to be sensitive in a de-sensitized and de-sensitizing world.”
Who comes first?
In her book This is Where I Stand: the Power and the Gift of Being Sensitive, Hass writes, “Who comes first? Deep down inside we are such good people. We are so committed to bringing goodness into the world. But actually for many of us, this is exactly what leads us to being so sick and so tired.
“More often than not we put our commitment to ’saving the world’ ahead of our own well-being. In fact, many of us have the unconscious belief that we must ’save the world’ before we can attend to our own needs.”
She continues, “Remember our wonderful ideal qualities:
* Internally deeply caring
* Deeply committed to the positive and the good
* On a mission to bring peace to the world
* Strong personal morality
* Often make extraordinary sacrifices for someone / something we believe in
“Interestingly, sensitive people often fail to include themselves in this mission. The other day when I pointed out to my client how good she is to OTHER people, she said to me in surprise, ‘Of course I would never let anyone else down! But it hadn’t occurred to me that I let MYSELF down.’
“Sometimes we intentionally leave ourselves off the list, in an attempt not to be ’selfish.’
“Self-ish? When someone mentions being selfish to me, I always reframe it. I say, How about spelling ’selfish’ with a capital S – make it ‘Selfish. I draw a big S in the air. The capital S stands for your soul. If you don’t take care of your soul,
no one else will So go on and BE SELF-ISH!! You have the right. You deserve that!”
Being sensitive is the kind of awareness that can save the world
Have You Ever Heard:
“Oh, you are just too sensitive!”
“You take things so hard!”
“Just let it roll off your back.”
“Why can’t you just let it go!”
And maybe even, “What’s wrong with you? You are such a cry baby!”You have probably thought they were right – there must be something wrong with you! Being sensitive is not only a real emotional temperament, it is the kind of awareness that can save the world.
I speak as a “highly sensitive person” myself. It has taken me most of my life to understand this temperament and value it for its gifts. In my work as an Intuitive Mentor I have worked with many people like you or your loved ones.If you’re reading this and feeling, “Yeah, that’s me, alright!” YOU are the help that is on the way, whether you are sensitive yourself, or partnered, working or interacting with, or the parent of someone who is sensitive.
This book [This is Where I Stand: the Power and the Gift of Being Sensitive] describes the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of the highly sensitive temperament, and teaches how to resolve and heal them using the self empowering new techniques of Energy Psychology, specifically Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). It includes many personal stories of how to use this wonderful new method to transform your experience of being sensitive into feeling its true power and gift in you.
Using a supposed disability to stay safe and stuck
In her article Thoughts on Psychological Reversal, she talks about a man she worked with, who was challenged with ADD. “Tapping” refers to one of the main techniques of EFT therapy or self-help.
“The problem—’my learning disability,’ which over the years in this sensitive person had been a difficult challenge for him – was now something that was limiting his progress. Now he wanted to move ahead, but his unconscious mind had become committed to keeping him safe from failing.
“Way back there in his past, somehow, he had brilliantly but mistakenly turned his ‘learning disability’ into a strategy. Its positive intention was to keep him safe from a judging, critical world—in which he felt alien and ineffective.
“We tapped on all the statements we had elicited, using them as set-up statements, beginning of course with tapping on the side of his hand. He ended the session in a state of meditation, staring into the flame of the candle on my table, saying quietly:
“Whenever this confusion comes up now, I know I have a choice. I can always choose to honor the flame at the core of my being.”
high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity resources, emotional balance, emotional intelligence coaching, emotional intelligence development
]]>0Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Developing creativity: hypervigilance and highly sensitive people]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=752009-04-05T04:45:45Z2009-04-05T04:45:45ZThe idea of the “sensitive artist” may be a cliche, but still basically true. Sometimes high sensitivity may be based on difficult or hurtful situations. Ashley Judd says she was a “hypervigilant child.”
To fuel creative expression requires that we have an ability to be in touch with internal and external feelings and sensations.
As Michael Eigen, PhD, author of the book The Sensitive Self, puts it, “Thinking and feeling are ways sensitivity unfolds or grows… without the sensory sea we take for granted, feeling and thought would dry up and die.”
From his article Sensitivity (an excerpt from his book).
But there are different forms of high sensitivity.
A new Success magazine article reports that Ashley Judd to a large extent had a very unsafe childhood, “But that doesn’t mean my parents didn’t love me,” she says, “because, of course, they did. I can say this with genuine, heartfelt clarity; they did absolutely the best they could with what they had at the time.”
The article continues, “Sometimes that wasn’t good enough, she admits. In her early years she was shuttled to as many as 13 different schools in 12 years, alternately living with her mother, her father and her grandmother.
“She became what she calls a ‘hypervigilant child,’ raising herself under unpredictable circumstances, becoming lonely, depressed, isolated—all feelings she kept under wraps for years.”
She entered a treatment program in 2006.
“All I know is that I am grateful now for those experiences because I had the opportunity to do a lot of healing work on myself, and that has endowed me with a fairly awesome capacity for compassion and empathy.”
“Her focus these days is an organization called Population Services International (PSI), a nonprofit organization with grassroots health programs in 65 developing countries that is focused on prevention and treatment.”
From article Just Like Us – Ashley Judd brings hope to the world’s most impoverished, Success magazine success.com May 2009
Judd also relates being “a hypervigilant child” to “always striving to be perfect” – another issue for personal development that affects many gifted adults.
“A wonderful pastor once told me, perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse,” she said. “So now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself. Period.”
A summary definition of hypervigilance is provided by Wikipedia as “an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats.
“Hypervigilance is also accompanied by a state of increased anxiety which can cause exhaustion. Other symptoms include: abnormally increased arousal, a high responsiveness to stimuli and a constant scanning of the environment for threats. Hypervigilance is a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder.”
But hypervigilance is not the form of high sensitivity that is probably most associated with creative expression.
Therapist Susan Meindl notes that intensity is often a feature of creative individuals, plus “a low sensory threshold (ie: stimulation cannot be stopped from entering) – strong reactions to sensory stimuli.
“High sensitivity easily leads towards excitability and individuals often respond with strategies intended to manage and control their level of stimulation.
“Some of these attempts to live life in response to a sensitive temperament may appear eccentric or cause problems for others… but sensitivity also opens up pathways towards the important and highly valued human ability to create and also to live creatively.”
]]>0Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Singer Joss Stone on being a ‘little empath’]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=712009-03-31T05:07:56Z2009-03-31T05:04:10ZSinger Joss Stone has created three top-selling albums and earned a Grammy. In a recent magazine interview, she talked about being highly sensitive.
“I think I’m just very, very emotional. My mom used to call me her little empath. I just feel other people’s love and other people’s pain very, very easily.
“Which can be dangerous when you set yourself to be that open. It can mess with your own heart.” Stone smiles. “But in another way, it just makes your life fuller to really feel every inch of everyone’s feelings, including your own.
“When you’re singing a song, you have to tell the story. That’s the most important part about love—to tell the story. Otherwise, don’t bother.”
Also acting
The article adds, “Next month, she takes a major jump into acting when she joins The Tudors, Showtime’s steamy historical take on the reign of Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Stone will play his less-than-glamorous fourth wife, Anne of Cleaves.”
“Anne wasn’t exactly a hottie,” Stone says with a laugh. “But I connected with her insecurity because I was just as nervous when I stepped on the set. She was scared. I like doing things that are difficult. I like the thrill of not knowing. Throwing yourself headfirst into the deep end is my kind of fun.
“I had to take out my nose ring,” says Stone. “And the makeup man had to work real hard to cover my tattoos.”
“In 2005, the 21-year-old from Kent, England, was voted the World’s Sexiest Vegetarian by PETA, alongside Coldplays’ Chris Martin. Stone has been a vegetarian since birth.”
From Joss Stone: I Like Being A Free Spirit, by Jeanne Wolf, Parade mag. 03/29/2009.
Dolly Parton
Among many other artists who talk about being highly sensitive, Dolly Parton says, “I hurt real easy and real deep, which is why I think I have to write songs, and why so many of them fit the feelings of so many people that can’t write. It’s because I feel everything to my core.”
Energy psychiatrist Judith Orloff reports when she was growing up, she was “a gigantic sponge, absorbing the emotions of people around me.” [See post Psychiatrist Judith Orloff on coping with emotional overload.]
high sensitivity resources, gifted talented characteristics, highly sensitive people, emotional intensity, being an empath
]]>0Douglas Ebyhttp://<![CDATA[Highly sensitive people: latent inhibition and creativity]]>http://highlysensitive.org/?p=642009-03-24T05:48:32Z2009-03-16T05:35:43ZOne aspect of high sensitivity is increased sensory input. There are some intriguing research studies on how this works at the level of the brain and nervous system, and how it affects creative ability.
photo credit: LeTigerA study in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (titled “Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals” – see PDF) found that the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment.
A University of Toronto press release noted, “Other people’s brains might shut out this same information through a process called ‘latent inhibition’ – defined as an animal’s unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs.
“Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.
“This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment,” says co-author and University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson.
The Eide Neurolearning Blog post titled The Biology of Creativity – Right Hemispheric Thinking, Problem Solving by Insight, and Diffuse Attention refers to studies on attentional style and creativity, including a Northwestern University study that references the above “Decreased Latent Inhibition…” paper and notes, “…psychometric measures of creativity and measures of real-world creative achievement are associated with a habitual tendency toward diffuse rather than focused attention, which results in ineffective filtering of distracting or irrelevant environmental stimuli.”
Elizabeth Mika (director of Gifted Resources in Northern Illinois) has commented that this study and other research in clinical psychology and psychiatry support psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski’s conclusions on the relationship between creativity and overexcitability (not called that in the studies). See her article Theory of Positive Disintegration as a Model of Personality Development For Exceptional Individuals.
Overwhelm and overload
But overexcitability and the related phenomenon of decreased neural inhibition can result in overload and even disorder.
“Throughout our daily lives we experience an influx of emotions, sensations, and sounds,” he writes. “If we had to consciously decide at all times what to ignore and what to pay attention to, we would quickly become overstimulated.
“This ability to screen things out of awareness that were previously tagged as irrelevant is called latent inhibition. Latent inhibition has a strong biological basis and operates automatically to filter out information.
“Those high in latent inhibition are very good at this inhibition. Those with a reduced latent inhibition have a difficult time with this form of inhibition. Reduced latent inhibition has been associated with schizophrenia as well as a predisposition to psychosis.”
Creativity
But, he adds, “Recently researchers have wondered whether a reduced latent inhibition can actually be beneficial for creativity.
“After all, decreased LI may make an individual more likely to see connections that others may not notice. Prominent psychologists such as Hans Eysenck and Colin Martindale have argued for the importance of disinhibition for creative thought.
“Indeed, research conducted by fellow PT blogger Shelley Carson and her colleagues have found among a sample of Harvard students that those with a high IQ and decreased LI tended to report increased creative achievement.”
~ ~
In my book, I emphasize the importance of learning how to stay centered in a stressful, highly emotionally charged world.
Since emotions such as fear, anger, and frustration are energies, you can potentially “catch” them from people without realizing it.
If you tend to be an emotional sponge, it’s vital to know how to avoid taking on an individual’s negative emotions or the free-floating kind in crowds.
Another twist is that chronic anxiety, depression, or stress can turn you into an emotional sponge by wearing down your defenses. Suddenly, you become hyper-attuned to others, especially those with similar pain.
That’s how empathy works; we zero in on hot-button issues that are unresolved in ourselves. From an energetic standpoint, negative emotions can originate from several sources. What you’re feeling may be your own; it may be someone else’s; or it may be a combination.
I’ll explain how to tell the difference and strategically bolster positive emotions so you don’t shoulder negativity that doesn’t belong to you.
This wasn’t something I always knew how to do. Growing up, my girlfriends couldn’t wait to hit the shopping malls and go to parties, the bigger the better–but I didn’t share their excitement.
I always felt overwhelmed, exhausted around large groups of people, though I was clueless why. “What’s the matter with you?” friends would say, shooting me the weirdest looks. All I knew was that crowded places and I just didn’t mix.
I’d go there feeling just fine but leave nervous, depressed, or with some horrible new ache or pain. Unsuspectingly, I was a gigantic sponge, absorbing the emotions of people around me.
With my patients, I’ve also seen how absorbing other people’s emotions can trigger panic attacks, depression, food, sex and drug binges, and a plethora of physical symptoms that defy traditional medical diagnosis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than two million Americans suffer from chronic fatigue. It’s likely that many of them are emotional sponges.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you’re on emotional overload.
With strategies to cope, you can have quicker retorts to stressful situations, feel safer, and your sensitivities can blossom.
.. Author and success consultant Jenna Forrest writes in her memoir Help Is On Its Way about growing up with the trait of high sensitivity. In our recent podcast interview, she talks about empowering and transcending sensitivity. From the interview:
“Millions of highly sensitive people right at this moment are carrying a heavier burden than the rest of society just because they’re perceptive of the world’s discord, which is coming at them every day from a laundry list of sources.
“This is where many sensitive kids and adults are right now, thinking that all these energies going on inside them are because something’s wrong with them.
“Highly sensitive people have a beautiful ability to turn these burdens into art, inventions, writing, acting and other expressions that speak to the hearts of humanity.
“They also have powerful, healing intuition that when developed, can be used to nullify the suffering that’s been endured by themselves and others.”
Continued in podcast interview (and transcript) on Inner Talent Interviews.
~ ~
Sign up here to Jenna’s free e-newsletter and get the first 15 chapters of her book delivered to your inbox. ..
In her ebook “You’ve Got Nerve!” An Empowerment Toolkit for Highly Sensitive People, Erika Harris helps readers celebrate and nurture themselves.
“There are two different types of social phobia. The first is generalized, where anything and everything in the way of social interaction has the potential to send your nerves into overdrive.
A new Success magazine article reports that Ashley Judd to a large extent had a very unsafe childhood, “But that doesn’t mean my parents didn’t love me,” she says, “because, of course, they did. I can say this with genuine, heartfelt clarity; they did absolutely the best they could with what they had at the time.”
Singer Joss Stone has created three top-selling albums and earned a Grammy. In a recent magazine interview, she talked about being highly sensitive.
“Those high in latent inhibition are very good at this inhibition. Those with a reduced latent inhibition have a difficult time with this form of inhibition. Reduced latent inhibition has been associated with schizophrenia as well as a predisposition to psychosis.”
In my book, I emphasize the importance of learning how to stay centered in a stressful, highly emotionally charged world.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you’re on emotional overload.
Author and success consultant Jenna Forrest writes in her memoir